This invention concerns an engine ignition system with control of the dwell time during which the primary circuit of an ignition coil is closed for current flow prior to interruption for exciting an ignition pulse, such control being accomplished by an increment transducer driven by the engine and means for counting increments thus provided during a portion of the dwell time determined by the primary current flow up to a predeterminable current value, so that the counting means result controls the duration of an increment counting procedure between the previous dwell end and the succeeding beginning of the dwell time of the next cycle. An ignition system with an incrementing transducer for such a purpose is already known from German published patent application DE-OS No. 2 711 8. The known regulation of dwell time, which is equivalent to dwell angle in terms of crankshaft rotation, is based on the known principle that the magnitude of the following dwell angle is the K-fold multiple of the portion of the previous dwell angle in which the ignition coil primary current has risen to 1/K of the nominal value. The disadvantage of this known principle is that at high acceleration, particularly from lower starting speeds, the following dwell angle thus set is too small. After the beginning of counting out the open time no further substantial influence on the beginning of the following dwell time is possible.